In many commercial establishments, such as larger department stores, grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, outdoor amusement areas, and the like, there has been an increasing trend to provide patrons with background music or other background material. Such a source of background material provides the electrical and audio capacity to also periodically insert commercial messages or programs of varying sorts.
To date, most such special announcements have been made in person by the store manager, or some type of operator which manually switches off the background music, switches on his microphone, makes his announcement, switches off the microphone, and reactivates the background music. This is not totally desirable, in that the store manager or person making such an announcement is often busy, especially at peak hours, when such announcements would reach the largest audience and should be made. The result is that announcements often cannot be made on such a system according to a prescribed time schedule, as might be desirable.
Further, such advertisements are generally made by an announcer who has little or no training in announcing, voice projection, or otherwise is not so qualified to make such announcements, with the result that such announcements are often ineffective or even offensive. More effective commercial announcing can be achieved by a professionally recorded commercial; however, it is still necessary for the store manager to periodically activate the recorded program, and deactivate the music, with the same attendant disadvantages as set forth hereinabove as far as the timing is concerned.
The prior art has provided systems in which audible messages may periodically interrupt a background music or other material, e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,068,106; 3,147,346; and 3,825,947. However, no such system has combined with the general features, the additional capabilities of selectivity of the programs to be played, so that some selected commercial messages can be skipped when desired, overridden while they are being played, or started regardless of the timing sequence, nor is there in such systems the capability for playing the commercial announcement at a higher volume than the background music.